Emile Pouget Archive
Written: 1898.
Source: RevoltLib.com
Transcription/Markup: Andy Carloff
Online Source: RevoltLib.com; 2021
Having disposed of the moral objections to Sabotage, we must now face those of different type of critics, that is, of such eminent and world-renowned theorists of Syndicalism as Sorel, Leone, Michels and others.
It is claimed that Sabotage would injure the cause of the workers before the public and that it would degrade the moral value of those that practice it. As to the first objection we may answer that if by public opinion we mean the people at large, these are and always will be favorable to the cause of any class of workers. whatever their actions, simply because they are workers themselves. If, on the other hand, we mean by public opinion that part of the public which comes under the daily influence of the press, we are willing to say that little we care for it. The capitalist press will never champion the workers’ cause; it will never tell the truth about them, no matter how nice and gentlemanly they may behave and, Sabotage or no Sabotage, it will continue persistently to lie about them. It is, indeed, to be expected that it will lie still more and more and distort and falsify facts ever and ever on a larger scale as fast as the workers become more revolutionary in their attitude, and the labor movement more conscious of its destined end, which is the overthrow of the capitalist system. The workers must get used to consider themselves absolutely isolated in their struggles (they were ever so in their real ones) and the sooner they cease to believe in the myth of the omnipotence of public opinion, the more will they rely on their own strength exclusively and the nearer will they be to their emancipation, which can be brought about only by themselves.
The other objection, that Sabotage is repugnant to the dignity of the workers and it makes them cheats and sneaks by making them fight in a devious and underhanded way is absolutely without foundation, as Pouget proves.
It were well, however, to add that Sabotage can be practiced only by the most intelligent and the most skillful workers who know thoroughly the technique of their trade, as Sabotage does not consist in a clumsy and stupid destruction of the instruments of production, but in a delicate and highly skillful operation which puts the machine out of commission only for a temporary period. The worker that undertakes such a task must know thoroughly — the anatomy of the machine which he is going to vivisect and, by this fact alone, puts himself above suspicion.
Moreover, it is obvious that he must be prompted by a desire to help his brothers, that is by unselfish motives, and this added to the fact that he risks more than the others, develops a spirit of self-abnegation and individual daring which makes him quite the opposite of the sneaks our opponents love to describe.
The saboteur, to illustrate, is exactly like a spy in disguise in the camp of the enemy.
There is in the City Hall Square at New York a monument to Nathan Hale, a young American revolutionist who went to spy in the English camp, was found and executed. He is considered a great hero and held up as an example to school children.
On the 2nd of October, 1780, the American Revolutionists hung at Tappan on the Hudson, Major John Andre, a British spy who was captured under similar circumstances. Today, on the same spot, where he was captured there is a monument erected to him — not by the British — by the Americans, by his own capturers and executioners.
Now, why should glory in real warfare be considered a disgrace in the nobler and greater battle for bread and liberty? Suppose that during the Spanish-American War a regular of the United States Army, disguised as a Spanish sailor, had boarded the Spanish flagship, succeeded in getting into a signal tower and then proceeded to so change and derange the signals as to disorganize and confuse all the movements of the enemy’s fleet so that it would result in a great victory for his country? Wouldn’t you go wild with enthusiasm and pride?
Well, now, for argument’s sake, why shouldn’t you admire a striker who went as a scab, say, to work in the subway, and then by putting a red lantern in the wrong place (or rather in the right place), disarranges and demoralizes the whole system? If a single, humble red lantern can stop an express train and all the trains coming behind it, and thus tie up the whole traffic for hours, isn’t the man who does this as much of a benefactor to his striking brothers as the soldier mentioned above to his army? Surely this is “ethically justifiable” even before the Capitalist morality, if you only admit that there is a state of belligerency between the working class and the capitalist class.
Saboteurs are the eclaireurs, the scouts of the class struggle, they are the “sentinelles perdues” at the outposts, the spies in the enemy’s own ranks. They can be executed if they are caught (and this is almost impossible), but they cannot be disgraced, for the enemy himself, if it be gallant and brave, must honor and respect bravery and daring.
Now that the bosses have succeeded in dealing an almost mortal blow to the boycott, now that picket duty is practically outlawed, free speech throttled, free assemblage prohibited and injunctions against labor are becoming epidemic; Sabotage, this dark, invincible, terrible Damocles’ Sword that hangs over the head of the master class, will replace all the confiscated weapons and ammunition of the army of the toilers. And it will win, for it is the most redoubtable of all, except the general strike. In vain may the bosses get an injunction against the strikers’ funds — Sabotage will get a more powerful one against their machinery. In vain may they invoke old laws and make new ones against it — they will never discover it, never track it to its lair, never run it to the ground, for no laws will ever make a crime of the “clumsiness and lack of skill” of a “scab” who bungles his work or “puts on the bum” a machine he “does not know how to run.”
There can be no injunction against it. No policeman’s club. No rifle diet. No prison bars. It cannot be starved into submission. It cannot be discharged. It cannot be blacklisted. It is present everywhere and everywhere invisible, like the airship that soars high above the clouds in the dead of night, beyond the reach of the cannon and the searchlight, and drops the deadliest bombs into the enemy’s own encampment. Sabotage is the most formidable weapon of economic warfare, which will eventually open to the workers the great iron gate of capitalist exploitation and lead them out of the house of bondage into the free land of the future.
Arturo M. Giovannitti.
Essex Co. Jail, Lawrence, Mass.
August, 1912.